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> To me, the economy looks insanely resilient in a global pandemic.

It does seem having a large part of the economy focussed on frivolous endeavours has given us a fairly big buffer. We have seen formula one teams making medical equipment, supermarkets hiring restaurant staff, hospitals hiring air stewards (after the opposite in recent years).

It looks to me like the developed world will cope with this (some countries better than others of course).

> To me, the economy looks insanely resilient in a global pandemic.

We’re still in the early days of this pandemic, as it usually takes many months for the upfront shocks to fully process through the economy. Numerous reports detail a potential collapse of the commercial real estate market, the government is signaling that it is going to hand out any more stimulus money, and health experts are warning about a second wave. Economists aren’t ruling out 40% unemployment down the road, which puts us firmly in depression territory.

I have no idea where you live, but I live in Austin, TX, a fairly affluent city, and the changes to the city have been dramatic and very visible. So much retail is still closed, and many thousands are out of work with little opportunity to renter the workforce and likely without future stimulus.

Just look at the George Floyd protests, there’s an inherent economic component to American racism and Covid provided a lot of fuel that the senseless killing of Floyd ignited. Those events did not occur in a vacuum, which is partially why we’re seeing unrest that we haven’t witnessed in 60 years.

Not to mention that millions never recovered from the last major crisis while politicians and big business pretended like everything was back to normal after the big market rallies.

> Numerous reports detail a potential collapse of the commercial real estate market

While I'm happy to bail out workers, can we please simply bust out the overleveraged on assets for once?

Part of the reason why the economy has no resilience is that we keep bailing out the irresponsible so there is no incentive to be responsible. Why keep inventory and cash reserves when you can go into 3x debt and get bailed out? Why be responsible when your competitor is basically going to get loan forgiveness instead of going bankrupt and you being able to buy them?

How about some "trickle up"? Bail out the individuals who are basically unleveraged and let the leveraged compete to try to stay afloat or go bankrupt and release the assets to those less leveraged. The real estate doesn't suddenly lose it's value because the owner got busted out.

It's what capitalism is supposed to be--risks are supposed to get upside AND downside.

Austin, despite the government and technology economy narrative, has been in a service economy bubble for some time as local businesses capture dollars arriving from elsewhere in the form of brunch costs.

If you want to have a conversation, the one to have is about social safety nets, not an "economic resilience" bogeyman.

Porque no los dos? You say you've lived in third-world countries, surely you can see the utility in a conversation on both and how much overlap there is between the two hemispheres of that particular socio-economic Venn Diagram..I'd hope?

> Things seem to be functioning pretty well

citation needed.

100,000+ people have died because our country is fragile. unemployment is somewhere between 15-25%. a virus is about the dumbest enemy we could ever hope to face, and we've failed.

the u.s. is in massive debt, the highest in the world. the u.s. has no socioeconomic safety net, and i question your claim that the u.s. could easily provide one if it wanted. the existing "safety nets", such as social security and taxes, are so abused and misused that they serve as explicit counter examples to your claim. roads and infrastructure in the u.s. are falling apart.

in no household would it be advisable to have massive debt upon debt while the house is falling apart and you're living paycheck to paycheck. and yet, that is exactly what the u.s. is doing.

in many respects, the response to the virus has been both the u.s. didn't want to react to it and that the u.s. couldn't react to it. the u.s. does not have the organizational capacity to handle it.